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The Brothers Bloom

From the movie, The Brothers Bloom, take your life in your hands.

When they arrive in Mexico, Penelope wears a fabulous, 1960s-vibe, long sleeved, funnel-neck-ish orange wool dress. It is a break from the brothers Bloom color scheme – she’s fallen in love, and that is unscripted. She wears this dress when Bloom (in cream linen) tells her that he and Stephen are con men, all the way through the fight and the gun going off, and her realizing she’s been had. It’s a lovely bit of punctuation on Penelope’s part, visually. I was almost cheering in the theater.

Later that evening she is in her pajamas – black, two-piece pajamas with cream piping detail on the collar – really nice. She and Bloom hook up in this sequence – he’s wearing a white shirt and black pants. Incidentally, it makes me wonder how the DP was able to get through all of the black and white combinations on screen without tearing his hair out? It is sometimes a real challenge to light two people in the same scene when one wears black and the other wears white. I mean, in a controlled environment, it’s probably not too bad. But in The Brothers Bloom, it was like this in most scenes, outdoors, indoors, everywhere. Not easy.

The Brothers Bloom by #RianJohnson

When Penelope blows up her mansion in New Jersey, she is back to the brothers Bloom color scheme – she’s wearing white, a notable absence of color. Then, when she goes to Montenegro to find Bloom, she wears a black furry coat, and a black/white/red print shirt, a combination we often see Bang Bang wearing.

Upon arrival in Prague, she adds a cheetah print wool coat to her ensembles, but it is still in the narrow range of cream, black, white – the brothers Bloom color schematic. The coat is to die for, in texture and silhouette. It’s classic, it’s hip, it’s funky but elegant – such a hard line to ride, and it is done brilliantly here. She also wears a pair of ridiculously beautiful retro-shaped cream framed sunglasses. With Rachel Weisz’ coloring: porcelain skin, dark hair, this ensemble is a total knockout. All of her costumes have a kind of 1960s, almost Jean Seberg (with more hair) vibe to them, and those sunglasses just put me over the edge.

"The Brothers Bloom" - Love this line!

THE BROTHERS BLOOM also contains some foul language. One brother travels and lives with his girlfriend. Finally, there are two scenes of implied sex between the other brother and the heiress.

Regrettably, THE BROTHERS BLOOM suffers from many content problems. The main issue is that the protagonists are con men and never regret nor have remorse about swindling money from wealthy people. They began their career in stealing and extortion at a young age, which is doubly problematic in that viewers see the young brothers extort money from an entire neighborhood. Ultimately, their life of crime does not pay for one of the brothers, however.

Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom

The Brothers Bloom - Trailer No. 2

Make way, make room! For the Brothers Bloom!

The cast, script and directing in THE BROTHERS BLOOM are top notch. Regrettably, THE BROTHERS BLOOM suffers from many content problems. The main issue is that the protagonists are con men and never regret swindling money from wealthy people. The movie also has some foul language. One brother travels and lives with his girlfriend. There is also implied sex between the other brother and the heiress. Because of these issues, THE BROTHERS BLOOM requires extreme caution before embracing these loveable characters who are ultimately bad guys.

The Brothers Bloom were foster children thrown around the system, sent from house to house. They were troublemakers who never fit in to any community. Stephen was the eldest, while Bloom was three years younger. After 38 different foster families, Stephen was disillusioned and realized that they were always going to be poor…unless they did something about it. He drew up a plan to con the neighborhood children out of their money, using Bloom as the point man. Bloom befriended the children, earned their trust, told them about a treasure in a cave in the woods and took their money. Bloom then led them through the cave where the kids got all dirty but were happy. Their parents came to the foster family and their stepdad knocked Stephen around until he gave the money back. They were sent away from the foster house, but on their way out of town the two collected 50 dollars from the town’s sole dry cleaner in exchange for bringing him so much business. They had found their calling.